Terrence Belford writing in the Globe and Mail today has an article on negotiating commercial real estate leases. Here are a few nuggets of good advice for any supplier negotiations, not just negotiations with your landlord.
* Don't begin negotiations with a threat
* Understand your supply market and what options/substitutions are real
* Consider what the other side wants to get out of the negotiations
* What can you bring to the table that is more valuable to the other party than it costs for you to provide - and vice versus
The article concludes with a pitch from a real estate negotiating service "In seven years, we have never had a situation where we did not save a client and in some case those savings have been considerable."
If you're thinking about using a service to do negotiations you should think hard about that quote. Do you have the expertise and market experience to do as well as a firm that has been doing this for seven years? Consider that your internal staff haven't been held to the same standard of having to earn revenue from their expertise that a service provider is required to meet. On the other hand, also take a hard look at how they define savings and what strategic value your company expects to receive from the negotations that are not captured by the term "Savings".
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